Look, I take my humor wherever I can find it these days.
Even if it’s in the real, live, very unfake news. And even if that unfake news sounds like the sort of fake news that used to air only in the satirical Onion.
But this Chick-fil-A-as-creepy-alien-invader-of-NY story doesn’t seem to contain all that much that’s tongue-in-cheek. What is Chick-fil-A’s horrible failing, according to the New Yorker article? Seems to be that the owners are Christians and don’t hide that fact, and that although they treat gay people just fine, they sometimes donate to causes that are against gay marriage for religious reasons.
Oh, and then there is their ad campaign, which seems to feature the joke (it’s a joke folks, so lighten up!) of cows saying to eat more chicken:
… [Chick-fil-A] franchises still hold an annual Cow Appreciation Day, offering free food to anyone dressed as a Cow. Employees dance around in Cow suits…They’ve been inducted into the Madison Avenue Walk of Fame, and their Facebook following is approaching seven figures. Stan Richards, who heads the ad agency that created the Cows, the Richards Group, likened them to “a guerrilla insurgency” in his book, “The Peaceable Kingdom”: “One consumer wrote to tell us the campaign was so effective that every time he sees a field of cows he thinks of chicken. We co-opted an entire species.”
It’s worth asking why Americans fell in love with an ad in which one farm animal begs us to kill another in its place. Most restaurants take pains to distance themselves from the brutalities of the slaughterhouse; Chick-fil-A invites us to go along with the Cows’ Schadenfreude.
The essay begins with this:
New York has taken to Chick-fil-A. One of the Manhattan locations estimates that it sells a sandwich every six seconds, and the company has announced plans to open as many as a dozen more storefronts in the city. And yet the brand’s arrival here feels like an infiltration, in no small part because of its pervasive Christian traditionalism. Its headquarters, in Atlanta, are adorned with Bible verses and a statue of Jesus washing a disciple’s feet. Its stores close on Sundays. Its C.E.O., Dan Cathy, has been accused of bigotry for using the company’s charitable wing to fund anti-gay causes, including groups that oppose same-sex marriage. “We’re inviting God’s judgment on our nation,” he once said, “when we shake our fist at him and say, ”˜We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.’ ” The company has since reaffirmed its intention to “treat every person with honor, dignity and respect,” but it has quietly continued to donate to anti-L.G.B.T. groups. When the first stand-alone New York location opened, in 2015, a throng of protesters appeared. When a location opened in a Queens mall, in 2016, Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed a boycott. No such controversy greeted the opening of this newest outpost. Chick-fil-A’s success here is a marketing coup. Its expansion raises questions about what we expect from our fast food, and to what extent a corporation can join a community.
One response:
https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/984888495230644225
The other story about which I had some trouble initially telling satire from reality involves James Comey. Oh, how the mighty have fallen—and this latest fall from grace was accomplished by Comey’s very own hand, in the writing of his very own book (assuming it wasn’t ghostwritten; one never knows).
But I had to look twice to understand that this excerpt from Comey’s book was not a spoof (please also scroll down here and read the responses):
I really hardly know what to say about this, except that it’s another example of giving people enough rope. When Trump supposedly called Comey a nutjob, it sounded like enormous hyperbole. But as time goes on and we see more of Comey unplugged, it appears that if not a nutjob then he’s certainly eccentrically and exaggeratedly full of himself (in that department he makes even Trump look comparatively modest).
In addition to the revelation about the all-important blue shirt, there’s this, which is an all-too-real excerpt from Comey’s book (which I haven’t read and probably never will read):
[Trump’s] face appeared slightly orange ”¦ with bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assumed he placed small tanning goggles, and impressively coifed, bright blond hair, which upon close inspection looked to be all his. ”¦ As he extended his hand,” Comey adds, “I made a mental note to check its size. It was smaller than mine, but did not seem unusually so.”
The style reminds me of nothing more or less than a women’s romance novel; I half expect for someone’s bodice to be ripped off by the end of the chapter. It’s hard to spoof something that already sounds satirical, but Alexandra Petri gave it a go in the WaPo:
I have been called a human humblebrag. I certainly couldn’t speak to the truth of that statement, except to say that where I come from, we don’t like bullies and their mean words. Bullies are mean and small, not like myself (I stand 6-foot-8, with a head of lush dark hair and eyes that pierce into the souls of everyone I encounter, like the eyes of a hawk who has read Reinhold Niebuhr (I wrote my thesis on Reinhold Niebuhr.)).
I would venture to say that I am the protagonist of my own life and perhaps the lives of many others. Certainly, no one else has as yet stood up to take on this grave responsibility, and it was my honor to rise to this challenge. It is a little embarrassing to describe myself: I stand, as mentioned, about 6-foot-8, like an oak with a firm sense of right and wrong and large, capacious hands. When I first seized Donald Trump’s, I took a mental note (and later, a physical note; I maintain scrupulous contemporaneous notes) that they had vanished into mine, like a dormouse curled up inside an oven mitt. But most hands do that when confronted with mine, except President Barack Obama’s, and ”” I hope ”” Reinhold Niebuhr’s, if we ever meet, in this life or the next.
[NOTE: Again with the Reinhold Niebuhr.]
